US Finals complete for the 2005 World Cyber Games Championships

The World Cyber Games completed its United States finals on September 10th. …

The World Cyber Games (WCG) is a professional computer and video game tournament that is now entering its fifth year. Semifinals are held in 70 different nations, and top players from each nation are invited to participate in a final championship event. This year, the championship is being held in Singapore. The selected games for the event are Counter Strike: Source, FIFA Soccer 2005, Halo 2, Need for Speed Underground 2, Dead or Alive Ultimate, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and Starcraft: Brood War. About 800 gamers will compete in the final tournament, fighting over prize money in excess of US$400,000.

Pro video gaming tournaments have had a rocky history. One of the most memorable examples of this was the Professional Gamers League (PGL), which had AMD as one of its premiere sponsors. The PGL, founded in 1997, was the first professional league to garner serious publicity. The PGL even had the distinction of introducing pro gaming's first superstar, Dennis "Thresh" Fong, who gained immortality by winning id software cofounder John Carmack's Ferrari in a Quake II tournament. However, the PGL ran into financial difficulties and was sold to the web site Gamers.com in May 2000. A rival league, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is still around today.

Most of the games in the WCG tournament are fairly recent, with one notable exception: Starcraft: Brood War, which was released in 1998 (Brood War was an expansion pack for the original Starcraft, which had been released earlier that year). In the computer gaming world, seven years is an absolute eternity, so why is such an old game still being played?

The answer lies in South Korea, and a professional gaming culture so far advanced from North American pro gaming that it seems to come from a century in the future. Lingering resentment over treatment in World War II caused South Korea to apply stifling tariffs on Japanese video game consoles, which when combined with a near-universal broadband internet infrastructure, created an environment where multi player PC games could flourish. Starcraft in particular, with its three well-balanced sides and emphasis on strong strategy and competition, appealed to the Korean public. Today, the best professional Korean Starcraft players have their own team uniforms, practice every day for games that are played on no less than four full-time Starcraft TV channels, and earn yearly salaries rumored to be in the high six figures. They even have legions of English-speaking fans, who follow their every move on web sites such as TeamLiquid.

Will professional gaming in the rest of the world ever reach such dizzying heights? The WCG owners hope so. While the first three WCG finals were held in Korea, last year's final was in San Francisco, and generated significant press for the event. Next year's host city will be Monza, Italy. Corporate sponsors include Samsung, Razer and Intel. Professional gaming as a spectator sport has not yet taken off outside of South Korea, but its popularity continues to grow worldwide. Will little kids one day wear replica jerseys of their favorite video game superstars? Only time will tell.